Science & Technology

Is the universe riding on an expanding bubble ?

By T.K. Randall
January 4, 2019

Image: Artist's Illustration of a Neutron Star
Credit: Casey Reed - Penn State University / (PD) NASA Back in the 1990s, three astronomers made a fundamental discovery about the expansion of the universe that would go on to not only win them a Nobel Prize, but would also cement the idea that the expansion of the universe is accelerating - a process driven by the mysterious 'dark energy'.

Understanding the mechanics of this expansion however, as well as the nature of dark energy, has proven to be a major challenge, with physicists mulling over numerous possible theories.

The most recent, which has been put forward by theoretical physicists at Uppsala University in Sweden, suggests that the universe exists on the edge of an expanding bubble filled with dark energy and that all existing matter corresponds to the ends of strings that extend in to another dimension.This theory also opens the door to the existence of other bubbles corresponding to other universes.

"One might wonder about the stability of the universe on top of the shell," the researchers wrote. "An obvious decay channel would be another bubble of true vacuum nucleating on top of the shell."

"However, this decay channel seems to be absent, giving a strong indication in favor of the stability of these bubbles. We intend to analyze the issue of stability in detail in an upcoming work."

Source: EurekAlert.org

Tags: Universe, Dark Matter